Glenn Reynolds, Dumbest Lawyer or Smartest Lemonade Stand* Proprietor

Go read this on MSNBC:

---

WMDs make Harry Reid's head explode

• November 1, 2005 | 10:51 PM ET

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid can't stand it. He was hoping that special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald would bring down the Bush Administration for him, but all he got was a lame indictment of Scooter Libby.

He showed his pique today by taking the Senate into closed session and demanding an investigation of prewar intelligence.

Well, okay -- but then the investigation needs to go way back before the war, to 1998, when a Democratic President, with the support of many Congressional Democrats, passed the Iraq Liberation Act, which provided that:

(1) On September 22, 1980, Iraq invaded Iran, starting an 8 year war in which Iraq employed chemical weapons against Iranian troops and ballistic missiles against Iranian cities.

(2) In February 1988, Iraq forcibly relocated Kurdish civilians from their home villages in the Anfal campaign, killing an estimated 50,000 to 180,000 Kurds.

(3) On March 16, 1988, Iraq used chemical weapons against Iraqi Kurdish civilian opponents in the town of Halabja, killing an estimated 5,000 Kurds and causing numerous birth defects that affect the town today.

...

(9),(10),(11) [you want to see those, go there]
...

It is the sense of the Congress that once the Saddam Hussein regime is removed from power in Iraq, the United States should support Iraq's transition to democracy by providing immediate and substantial humanitarian assistance to the Iraqi people, by providing democracy transition assistance to Iraqi parties and movements with democratic goals, and by convening Iraq's foreign creditors to develop a multilateral response to Iraq's foreign debt incurred by Saddam Hussein's regime.

Then there are statements like these:

"One way or the other, we are determined to deny Iraq the capacity to develop weapons of mass destruction and the missiles to deliver them. That is our bottom line." - President Bill Clinton, February 4, 1998

[more quotes of Democrats/Clinton officials about how bad Saddam was. Interestingly, no mention of the Hussein/Rumsfeld coffee klatch]

The anti-war fundraising base of the Democrats -- as exemplified by organizations like MoveOn.org -- is powerful enough to require Democratic politicians like Harry Reid to pretend that all the WMD stuff began with President Bush. That is, not to put too fine a point on it, a gross and partisan lie.

[money quote] Reid owes the President an apology. He owes another to the Democratic Party, whose credibility he is destroying, day by day.

UPDATE: Perhaps Reid should look at this Senate Intelligence Committee report on Iraqi WMD, which found that errors in intelligence on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction didn't stem from White House pressure, but from groupthink and systematic failure within the Intelligence Community:

The Committee found significant short-comings in almost every aspect of the Intelligence Community's human intelligence collection efforts against Iraq's weapons of mass destruction activities, in particular that the Community had no sources collecting against weapons of mass destruction in Iraq after 1998. Most, if not all, of these problems, stem from a broken corporate culture and poor management, and will not be solved by additional funding and personnel.

1998. Was Bush President then?

---

Here's what I sent to him in the comments. Really, we can't let this go unchallenged. Remember, for the GOP to succeed, all it takes is for the good men (& women) to do nothing.

- I don't think Reid views the indictment as lame, but maybe since it didn't include a blue dress, perhaps so. I'm not quite as up-to-date on my law as many of our lemonade stand proprietors.

- He didn't demand an investigation, he demanded progress on an ONGOING investigation. Spending too much time squeezing those lemons?

-Ah yes, the Clinton did it too! defense. There is no evidence in any of this that the Clinton administration would have prosecuted its efforts at neutralizing Iraq in the same way this administration has bungled their - excuse me - fought their way. Indeed there is contrary evidence, of qualitatively better results - just over the curve of the earth in North Korea. Oh, and didn't I just sense that the current administration is back to trying the same Clintonian efforts with that card carrying member of the axis of evil?

-Lastly, are you saying that EVEN if War was required, on this particular evil of the cacophony of evils extant, that we would have gone without armour, without vests, without a plan for the aftermath, without preparation? There is no way. Although, it would probably be true that the Clinton administration might not have had the Oil Ministry quite as high an after-conflict protectorate.

I know you loath comments - as do most wingnuts - I mean, your blog doesn't allow them. And I sometimes agree that wingnuts do fly off, but geez, maybe if you had allowed comments someone could try to pass along advice, even to the Lemonade/Clarence Darrow wannabe you are, sound advice, like, oh, Gee Glenn, Try something NEW, try thinking!


*Thanks to James Wolcott.